Fool Me Once: A Tarot Mystery Read online

I stood up and punched him in the face.

  You think defending yourself against marauding bread sticks was tough in the past? That was nothing. Now not only do you have to fight off the enemy, you have to do it upside down. That takes some skill and balance—and probably anti-gravity boots. In other words, things aren’t going to get any easier, but you’ve got to keep on fighting. If you don’t, you’re about to find out what a piñata feels like.

  Miss Chance, Infinite Roads to Knowing

  “Ow!” said GW.

  “Ow!” I said, too.

  He was holding his nose. I was shaking my hand.

  It was a good reminder of why I’m nonviolent: punching people hurts.

  I knew people around the fountain were stopping to stare, but I didn’t care.

  “Twice,” I spat. “Twice I let you fool me. No one fools me twice.”

  “You just contradicted yourself,” GW said.

  Maybe he felt safe because he had his hands over his nose. He shouldn’t have.

  “You’d never heard of the Fixer, had you?” I said. “You were just bullshitting me.”

  “I wanted to seem helpful—so I could stay close to you. Protect you.”

  “So you lied.”

  “I exaggerated.”

  I balled my aching hand back into a fist.

  “You go, girl!” a passerby shouted.

  “Okay, I lied! I lied!” GW said.

  I relaxed my hand.

  “Nothing to see here,” I said to the shoppers watching us. “Show’s over.”

  The shoppers started going on their way. A few of them groaned in disappointment.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” GW said to me. “I know I screwed up.”

  “Do you? Do you really know what you’ve done? I was this close to proving Marsha didn’t hire a hit man—and then, thanks to you, I had to let the proof just toddle on out of here. She said she’d be seeing another new client later. For all we know, that was Burby moving in on her. And now she might not show for their meeting because she’s already had a trap sprung on her today. No, you didn’t just screw up. You screwed Marsha.”

  As I spoke, GW wilted more and more. By the time I was done, he looked half a foot shorter.

  At least he had the decency to be ashamed—or the decency to look ashamed, anyway.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I really was trying to help.”

  Maybe it was the truth. Maybe it was a lie. It didn’t matter.

  “You’re not fooling me again, Fletcher. About anything,” I said. “We’re through. For good.”

  I turned to go.

  “Alanis…”

  I looked back at GW.

  He opened his mouth. I think he was going to ask for a ride back to Berdache.

  He saw the look on my face and thought better of it.

  “Good luck,” he said.

  I left him there.

  I drove back to the five and dime to change clothes and pick up supplies. When I was ready, I called Victor.

  “You still up for this?”

  “I’m still up for it,” he said, with all the enthusiasm of a man bending over for his proctologist.

  Which was fine. I didn’t need enthusiasm. I needed backup.

  “I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” I said. “Dress casual.”

  My cell phone started playing music as I walked to the door: “The Jean Genie.”

  I stopped and pulled the phone from the oversized purse I’d just scrounged out of the closet.

  “How is she?”

  “In shock,” Eugene said. “Being denied bail…she’s devastated.”

  “Were you able to ask my questions?”

  “I asked, but I didn’t get any answers. She doesn’t know why Jack Schramm would be bringing money to the house, doesn’t know why Bill’s boss would be spooked when he hears Schramm and Bill mentioned together, and doesn’t know anything about pottery in the crawl space or red skulls.”

  “Great,” I sighed.

  “Do you really think any of that means anything?”

  “I don’t know.” I started toward the door again. “But it better.”

  “Nice new look,” Victor said as he climbed into the Caddy. “I thought you said ‘dress casual’?”

  He was wearing sandals, cargo shorts, and a purple Polo shirt.

  I was wearing a long white peasant dress with a tie-dyed scarf around my waist.

  “I’m in character,” I said.

  “As Stevie Nicks?”

  I laughed. It was good knowing that Victor actually had a sense of humor. I’d been starting to wonder.

  I pulled away from the curb.

  “All right, no keeping you in the dark this time. I’m telling you everything up front,” I said. “We’re crashing a picnic.”

  “We’re what?”

  “Oak Creek Golf Resorts and Estates is having a staff/member mixer picnic this afternoon. I saw it in Harry Kyle’s day planner when we were in his office yesterday.”

  “So why are we going? Not for the free burgers and lemonade, I’m assuming.”

  “I want an excuse to talk to Kyle again—and hopefully meet Jack Schramm, too.”

  “Jack Schramm? I remember you mentioning that name yesterday. It seemed to give Kyle the heebie-jeebies. Who is he?”

  “A construction guy out at Oak Creek—and the person who found Bill Riggs’s body. Or pretended to find it, maybe. He and Riggs were cooking something up together, but I can’t figure out what.”

  Victor gave my clothes another up-and-down look. “So why the gypsy outfit?”

  “I’m the entertainment for the mixer. I’ll be doing free readings. Bill Riggs set it up with me before he was fired.”

  “Really?”

  I took my eyes off the road just long enough to throw Victor a look.

  “Oh, right,” he said. “Lies.”

  “You’ll get the hang of ’em one day.”

  “I hope not,” Victor said. “So how’d it go with that other guy—GW? You two weren’t able to ‘wrap it up’?”

  I shook my head. “It was a close call, but no. This is the backup plan.”

  I didn’t add what some people might have called it: “clutching at straws.”

  “The ILF strikes again,” I said as we drove through Oak Creek.

  The unfinished house that had been covered in graffiti the day before had been spray-painted again. Instead of saying indian land for indians, this time the message was keep the red rocks red—whites go home. Once again it was signed Indian Liberation Front.

  “You sure there isn’t a tribe that claims this area?” I asked Victor.

  “Well, I’m sure somebody got kicked off the land at some point. I don’t know of any dispute now, though.”

  “What would happen if a tribe did have a beef with building out here?”

  Victor shrugged. “A legal mess, I guess.” He sniffed the air and sat up a little straighter in his seat. “Hey…you smell that?”

  Up ahead was a clearing with tents and tables and balloons. Thirty or forty people were milling about, most of them dressed like Victor. Off to one side were two grills, both of them smoking.

  Victor’s stomach growled.

  “Let me guess,” I said as I pulled into the nearest parking spot. “You haven’t had lunch.”

  “It’s been a weird day.”

  “Tell you what—while I do my thing, you can get yourself something to eat and work the crowd.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “See if Jack Schramm’s here. He’s supposed to be a big bald guy. Rocks the Brawny man’s lumberjack look. You can ask around about Riggs, too. And that graffiti, while you’re at it.”

  Victor looked dubious. “I’d rather just grab myself a hot dog and stay out of the way.”

  “And how many murderers do you think have been caught because people grabbed themselves a hot dog and stayed out of the way?”

  “Uhhh…not many?”

  “That’s right.”

>   “Fine,” Victor sighed. “I’ll work the crowd.”

  “At least you still get the hot dog,” I said.

  Victor made a beeline for the grills and the cluster of casually dressed people milling around them. I headed for a picnic table in the shade of the clearing’s one tree—a tall, twisting juniper.

  Victor blended right in. I didn’t. Which was just how I wanted it.

  Harry Kyle approached as I seated myself and pulled my tarot deck from my purse. From the waist down, he was dressed the same as the day before—pressed slacks, shiny brown shoes. But from the waist up he was all pineapples and flowers and crashing waves.

  The Hawaiian shirt: one-stop shopping for the middle-aged man who wants to say hey, I can be fun!

  “Jennifer, isn’t it?” he said, grinning at me in a stiff, unnatural way—a taxidermist’s idea of a smile.

  “Hi, Harry! Are you gonna be first?”

  “First for what?”

  I put the deck on the picnic table. “A reading.”

  “A what?”

  I slapped a palm to my forehead. “I should have known! Bill never told you, did he? I do tarot cards, and he said I should come read at the picnic. It’d be fun for you guys, and maybe I’d pick up a new customer or two.”

  “Tarot cards?” Kyle threw a nervous glance over his shoulder. “That’s not satanic or anything, is it?”

  “Not in the slightest. Sit down; I’ll show you how it works.”

  “I don’t have time right now. It’s my job to be the life of the party.”

  Kyle tried to shoot me a hearty smile. He managed the smile—barely—but not the hearty.

  “Oh, come on, Harry. Aren’t you curious about your future?”

  Kyle looked over his shoulder again. This time something caught his eye.

  I followed his gaze.

  By the nearest grill, Victor was chatting with a muscular bald man in a flannel shirt.

  Jack Schramm, I presume.

  When Kyle turned my way again, the polyester pineapples over his armpits were starting to look darker.

  He was sweating.

  “Sure, why not?” he said. He forced out a laugh as he sat across from me. “I’d love to know if my golf game is ever going to improve.”

  I held out the deck. “Think of your question as you shuffle.”

  Kyle took the cards and fumbled with them awkwardly for a moment.

  It didn’t look to me like he was thinking about golf.

  I held out a hand, and Kyle gave the deck back. I spread the cards in an arc across the table.

  “Pull out five cards, but don’t turn them over yet.”

  Kyle thought carefully before selecting each card, as if some might be booby-trapped. Once he’d picked five, I arranged them facedown in front of me.

  “All right,” I said, “let’s see what’s going to happen to that handicap of yours.”

  I flipped over the top card.

  “The Three of Pentacles. This card indicates a group project, generally work related. But in your case—given what you were just thinking about—it might mean you’ve been playing golf with some new people. Like there’s an ongoing game you’ve become a part of. Does that sound right?”

  “Wow, yeah,” Kyle said with a jerky nod. “There has been something like that—a new game.”

  I flipped over the next card.

  “Oh, man. That is some golf game!” I said. “That poor woman’s been up all night thinking about it. See the swords? Those are worries about how it’s gonna turn out.”

  “Who is she?” Kyle asked.

  “Well, you, I assume.”

  Kyle swallowed hard. His armpit pineapples were growing darker by the second.

  “This ongoing game you’re in,” I said. “You’ve been letting it get to you.”

  “Oh, well, maybe a bit.” Kyle reached out and tapped the next card impatiently. “What else do you see?”

  For a man who barely knew what the tarot was, he was taking this reading pretty seriously, which told me how good a reading it was.

  I moved on to the next card.

  “What’s that?” Kyle asked. “An angel?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyle smiled. “So this is a good card.”

  “Not really. It’s reversed.”

  Kyle’s smile wilted. He was the quickest convert I’d ever seen. Underneath the pineapples and flowers, the guy was desperate.

  “What do you mean ‘reversed’?” he said.

  “Flipped. See how it’s not turned the same way as the others?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, Temperance—that’s this card—is usually pretty positive. It’s about mixing different energies to create something new. But reversed…it might mean the mix isn’t working. Like maybe your new golf buddies are throwing off your game.”

  “Oh, yeah—they are. Definitely,” Kyle said. “Let’s see what’s next.”

  I flipped the fourth card.

  “Justice,” Kyle said, reading off the corner of the card. “Like the statues on old courthouses.”

  The thought seemed to haunt him.

  “It’s sort of like that,” I said. “But she’s not blindfolded like the traditional symbol for Justice; she sees clearly. And her sword points straight in the air; it doesn’t lean to one side or the other. She’s not biased. It’s all about the facts. Same with the scale in her other hand; it’s perfectly balanced. The outcome is going to be fair.”

  “What outcome?”

  I shrugged. “The end of your game, I guess.”

  I remembered something I’d read in Infinite Roads to Knowing and decided to see how Kyle would like hearing it.

  “Some people call this the karma card,” I told him. “You know the old saying ‘what goes around, comes around’? That’s what this is all about. You’ve put something in motion—and it’s not going to stop until it comes back to you.”

  As I suspected, Kyle didn’t like that at all. He’d seemed so controlling and commanding the first time I’d seen him working the floor in the sales office. But now he looked anxious, confused, lost.

  It wasn’t that the cards had broken him. He was broken already—inside. The cards had merely parted the curtains.

  He reached out and flipped over the last card himself.

  “Well, that doesn’t look good,” he said with a joyless laugh.

  “The Five of Pentacles is about loss—usually financial. But since you asked about your golf game, the loss would relate to that. Maybe golf isn’t the game for you. Ever think about taking up tennis?”

  Kyle barked out another bitter laugh. “Tennis…if only.”

  “Harry,” I said, “the cards just show a moment in time: what you’re facing now, where you could be headed if things don’t change. You have the power to change everything. If these new golf partners of yours are causing you problems, you need to stop playing with them. Turn to someone else. Talk about what’s been going on. Get help.”

  Kyle finally tore his gaze away from the Five of Pentacles and looked me in the eye.

  You know we’re not talking about golf, don’t you? his expression said.

  Kyle opened his mouth.

  “Whatcha playin’?” a woman said. “If it’s poker, deal me in!”

  “Me, too!” another woman chimed in. “But can we make it blackjack? Poker’s got too many rules.”

  Kyle winced. He looked like he really, really didn’t want to turn around to see who was talking, but he forced himself to anyway.

  Five people were headed toward us: Victor, Jack Schramm, a wiry thirtyish man with the deep brown tan you get from working outside all day, and two women, a long-haired blond and a long-haired brunette. The women were both slightly stocky and extremely drunk. Each carried a large plastic cup with a straw poking from the top, and with every other step they sloshed slushy red liquid out onto the sun-bleached grass. The brunette was wearing a baseball glove on her other hand. The blond was using a softball bat as a cane.


  Kyle stood up.

  “I’d better go make sure no one’s burning the burgers,” he said to me. “Thanks for the help with my golf.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “Awww, Harry—don’t go,” the brunette said. “Stay and play cards with us.”

  “Please please please,” the blond begged.

  They both spoke with slurred, mushmouthed words. The party had started early for these two.

  “Sorry, ladies,” Harry said as he passed them. “No rest for the wicked.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m feelin’ pretty rested!” the brunette said.

  The blond cackled so hard she lost her balance and stumbled sideways into the tan man. He gave her a look of such raw, unhidden contempt it could only mean one thing: they were married.

  “Hey, Jennifer,” Victor said to me. (I was impressed that he remembered my fake name.) “I found some more customers for you.”

  The brunette squinted at me. “You said she’s a fortuneteller. Where’s her crystal ball?”

  “Maybe she’s a palm reader,” the blond said. She tossed aside the softball bat and held up her hand. “What do you see?”

  The correct answer, of course, would have been “a drunk.”

  What I said was, “Not much from over here. Come have a seat.”

  The blond and the brunette stumbled toward the picnic table.

  “Jennifer, this is Cathy Schramm and Debbie Luchetti,” Victor said. “And their husbands, Jack and Carl.”

  “Hell—” the tan man—Carl Luchetti—started to say. Before he could get to the “-o,” Debbie thrust her cup out toward him and said, “More.”

  He took the cup and turned back toward the grills.

  “Strawberry!” Debbie said as he left. “Not that mango shit!” She looked at me and grinned. “I hate mango.”

  “Uhhh…Jack and Carl both work for the company that’s putting up the houses here,” Victor said. “They were telling me something interesting about that graffiti we’ve been seeing.”

  “Oh?”

  I turned to Schramm, who was watching as his wife took a seat across from me. He looked worried that she might not be able to sit down without hurting herself somehow.

  “Yeah. It’s been going on for weeks,” he said, distracted. “The Indian Liberation Front keeps hitting the new houses we’re putting up on the north side of the development.”

  “Any idea what they’re mad about?” I asked.